Women's Sailing

No. 3 Bulldogs Back In Action

Dennis and Gaumond at the Dellenbaugh Trophy (Rob Migliaccio).

Sep 12, 2013

First Regatta of the Season at MIT This Weekend

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – The Yale women's sailing team will return to competition this weekend after a three-month hiatus. After a sixth-place finish at the nationals in May, the Bulldogs now stand third in the preseason rankings. All but two sailors from last year's team are returning and a promising class of freshmen is joining them.

The freshmen have actually been practicing with the team for three weeks already. Preseason training began on Aug. 21 and according to freshman crew Isabelle Rossi de Leon it has been very productive. "I feel like I have improved more in the past three weeks than in the last year," she said.

Rossi de Leon hails from Honolulu, Hawaii, where she captained her high school sailing team senior year. She is one of four recruits to join the team from the class of 2017.

Natalya Doris from Miami, Fla., comes with a significant amount of experience in both FJs and 420s. Meredith Megarry, from Ontario, was a member of the 2012 Canadian Youth National Sailing Team. Clara Robertson has raced 420s internationally and started the sailing team at her high school in Rye, N.Y.

These newcomers have a very experienced group of upperclassmen to lead them. At the skipper position, senior captain Marlena Fauer and junior Morgan Kiss are both returning after garnering All-American honors last season. Also, sophomore Marly Isler will be looking to build on her successful freshman year performance and junior Urska Kosir will switch roles after crewing for most of last season.

Captain Fauer reports that "all of the girls have been working really hard to get back into the swing of things and are definitely ready and eager to race this weekend."

This weekend the team will send four sailors to Cambridge, Mass., to race in the Toni Deutsch Regatta hosted by MIT. The regatta will be sailed in FJs on the Charles River.

Kiss and Salvesen will sail the Bulldogs' A division boat and Kosir and Johnson will sail the B division boat. They look to be in for a shifty northwesterly breeze on Saturday and a lighter westerly on Sunday.